Concurrent design involves collaboration, coordination, and information-based co-decision making within a potentially distributed multifunctional team. This paper shows that a generic process-centred environment kernel, based on fine-grain process modeling, using customizable product models, providing capabilities for task model refinement at run time, and true collaboration support, is a good candidate for building computer aided concurrent design environments. DOTS, a java prototype of such a generic environment kernel is described in this paper and its usage in the concurrent design application domain is discussed.